


Worst Case Scenario

by stover



Series: To Hell and Back [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blood and Gore, Galra!Keith, Gen, Metahuman!Lance, Older!Keith, Survival Horror, Unreliable Narrator, Violence, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 08:50:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11825259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stover/pseuds/stover
Summary: Pulled out of a cryo-pod and into a devastated world, 18-year-old Lance McClain meets a veteran survivor of a global epidemic that was supposed to have ended ten years ago.





	Worst Case Scenario

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Voltron Mini-Bang 2017](http://voltronbang.tumblr.com/).

******SURVIVAL TIPS  
** **_Tip #1_ ** — **_How to survive falling off a waterfall_ **

  1. Don’t panic.
  2. Take a deep breath.
  3. Feet first.
  4. Tighten your muscles.
  5. Wrap arms around your head.
  6. Tuck nose in the crook of your elbow.
  7. Just before you hit, press your legs together, tighten your gluteals.
  8. Swim immediately.



 

* * *

  

Nine months ago, I stopped living.

Birds fill the empty space in my head as the sun flits through the broken shades. A dusty curtain mutes the burning light. Summer is hot in California. It’s hot in Ohio, too; enough to make me feel nostalgic.

Nine months ago—at least, I think it’s been nine months—I stopped living. Met a guy, stepped on Dad, ran from home… Shot a deer, skinned a rabbit, killed a girl… Nine months ago.

She wasn’t a girl anymore, Keith said. _Still_ says. She wasn’t.

Morning brings the heat early today. It sweats into your skin, thick and heavy, like someone who’s breathing down your neck to see if you’re doing the right thing—And I’m doing the right thing.

I am.

 

* * *

 

The house is new. Lance sees the refurbished kitchen and the new tiles in the large bathroom next to the linen closet. He knows the kitchen and bath are new because they’re the only rooms in the house that seems to have traded grandiose style for effortless minimalism, something people are doing a lot of these days.

Were. _Were_ doing a lot of these days.

He shuts the door to the bathroom and leaves for the next room. There’s a bed inside, with sheets. No blanket. The dresser across from it is slanted and missing the knobs of the second drawer. He wonders if there’s something trapped inside. Probably, probably not. He pries it open and finds nothing but junk. Cash. Photos. A box full of coins, and a ring. The ring is a nice one, a bright gold with glittering diamonds on the band. It's a man’s ring. Lance picks it up and holds it in the air, admiring the shine. His eyes drop to the photos that are lying face-down at the bottom of the drawer. He presses a finger onto the dusty back of one of the photos, his thumb moving along the edges as if he means to turn it over, as if he wants to see whose house this was or whose ring this was. As if he wants to see if he’s seen this man’s face on his way here, if this was the man whose face he’s cracked open with a crowbar, or the one he held down for it to get shot, or the one—

Lance pulls his hand back, putting the ring back and closing the drawer.

He stands up and turns around, facing the bed. He digs into his pocket for the granola bar he took from the kitchen and tosses it on the floor inches away from the bed.

Nothing happens.

It’s safe, he thinks.

He leaves the granola bar on the floor and gets to the window because the room needs air. _He_ needs air. He’s pushing open the window when the door suddenly slams open.

He almost falls out of the window. “Jesusfucking _christ,_ Keith—!”

Keith crosses the room in four large strides. He stops in front of him, palm outstretched in front of his pants. “Take it out.”

“Whoa, buddy, going a little fast there—”

“The _tracker,_ Lance.” Keith’s in no mood for jokes. “Take out the tracker.”

“Alright, alright, geez…”

He’s not stupid. He knows what Keith was talking about.

The tracker is a clunky device that’s small enough to fit into the side pocket of his cargo pants. For months, it’s dragged them through nine layers of hell and back. And each time, it leads them to a broken shard of—of something. He’s not sure what it is they’re looking for; even Keith says he’s not sure. Only Dr. Holt knows what it is, but Dr. Holt’s dead now and so’s everyone else.

Lance holds the tracker out, the weight of it like an iron—

Keith grabs it and starts walking away.

Lance leans against the open window and scowls, watching Keith tapping madly on the screen of the tracker like some teenager on their phone. He “You kind of… look like my sister doing that.”

Keith looks up from the screen to give Lance a long look. Then he sits on the bed. “Wanna talk about it?”

Lance laughs. “No, I wasn’t— I wasn’t having an emo moment, I was just—”

Keith’s brow furrows “Emo moment?”

Lance buries his face in his hands, still laughing. “Oh my god. Oh my god, you don’t know _anything.”_ A scowl rolls into his ears, churning low beneath the waves of laughter still coming out of him.

“I told you,” he hears Keith say, “I didn’t land here at birth. Not enough people around for me to learn much of anything, either. Your planet was already dying when I came.”

He stops laughing. He stops breathing, too; like he’s been kicked in the gut.

“Sorry.”

It’s weird hearing that word from him. Just like how it’s weird hearing that he’s not from here the way everyone else is.

Was. Is.

Both.

He changes the subject. “What’s the tracker say?”

Keith looks down at the machine in his hands, brow furrowing. Lance wonders how rudimentary their technology might seem to him. He wishes he could show Keith PROMETHEAN Labs as it was, back when it was Lance’s home. It was an astounding place, where algorithms danced to the waltz of man and machine. What a shame Keith saw only the rubble, that they met in some forgotten basement. What a shame…

“We’re close. Five miles.” Something crinkles. The sound makes Lance freeze. He watches Keith look away from the tracker and down at the floor near the bed. “…You’re wasting food.”

“Dude, that thing’s been expired for five years.”

“I’ve been eating these things since I got here. I’m still alive.”

“You’re a fucking alien!”

The Cliff bar gets thrown in Lance’s direction. It falls on his lap, the nutrition label on its back in clear sight. At the bottom, stamped on the flap, is a set of numbers. Oops, Lance thinks as he takes a closer look at the date, It’s not expired by five years.

It’s expired by seven years.

Lance knocks it off his lap. “You’re trying to kill me.”

“Hey.”

The way Keith says it makes him look up. It’s soft, quiet. So is the expression on his face. His lungs squeeze tight around the air left in his chest, his heart stuttering along. If he says anything, would that ruin the moment?

“You ever been to the…” Keith glances back to the tracker. “…Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?”

He almost chokes. He’s torn between wanting to kick himself for reading too into things again and suddenly wanting to cry. A wheezing breath bursts from his lungs as his heart slinks into his stomach. His hand squeezes around the Cliff bar; he can feel the dried-out grains crunch like the weathered bones of a child. The thought makes him want to throw up, so he starts to laugh.

Keith growls. “What’s so funny? Did I say it wrong? I didn’t say it wrong.”

“The Hall of Fame,” Lance hears himself say, “We’re going to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”

Keith’s eyes narrow at him. “Is that gonna be a problem?”

Lance feels a grin shake across his face. “I always told my parents how much I’d kill to go there. Guess I earned it, now.”

Keith stares at him for a long, long time. Lance watches him lookdown at the dusty sheets on the bed, scratching his head as the corners of his lips pull down. “You should eat,” he says, “It’s not good to skip meals.”

“This shit’s expired.”

“Is your gun loaded?”

“What?”

Keith repeats himself. “Is your gun loaded?”

“I’m not deaf, I know what you said—”

Keith gets up. “Don’t leave it behind. We’re leaving.”

It’s Lance’s turn to stare. “We just got here.”

Keith’s already heading for the door. “You’re not feeling right. We need to go in, get whatever it is we need to get this time, and get out.”

“Whoa, buddy, chill out for a sec—”

“And you need to eat. Don’t skip meals—”

“Fuck off with the rules for a bit and—”

Keith shoots him a look he hasn’t seen in a while. He’s angry. “Don’t skip meals,” is the response he gets. It cuts like a knife. “And don’t leave your gun.”

The door shuts with a slam, and Lance is left alone. He throws the Cliff bar at it, hearing the sharp crack so loud, it snaps the silence in half and leaves a stinging ring in his ears.

Ten seconds pass, and Lance grudgingly picks himself up.

In the next second, the entire floor shakes and Keith barrels through the door. Lance shoots twice with hardly a second thought. Keith drops and rolls to the side, grabbing the discarded granola bar from the floor, and leaps over the bed. In the doorway, a stinking figure crumples to the floor, pink and grey oozing out of their skull.

Lance squints, watching rotting brain matter flow out of a collapsed skull like the hallway isn’t echoing with guttural moans and nonsensical groaning. Instead, Lance cackles and slaps a hand against the wall.

“Ha! First headshot! Whoo!”

At his shout, the groaning escalates and footsteps grow louder. He spies three lumbering figures with mangled faces scrambling to round the corner. One of them trips and falls, its nose falling right off. The bony stump of its companion stabs through its back. They get stuck.

Lance whistles. “Wow. Well, you know what they say, pick your friends wisely. Don’t wanna make nice with any backstabbers— _Oof!”_

Keith yanks Lance down. He almost breaks his nose crashing face-first into the side of the bed. Lance yelps and claps a hand over his nose. It’s still there.

Keith is hardly concerned. “What are you doing?” he hisses, eyes glaring murder into his own.

“Alright, alright, calm down, geez. We’re not gonna die here, okay? Look, there’s only twooo… and a half of them. Is that one still alive? I think so. So yeah, two and a half.” Lance points the handgun at the face of a man with a balding, decaying scalp. “Dibs on baldy. You can play with peg-leg if ya want, but he’s kinda stuck back there.”

Keith grabs the gun out of Lance’s hands. “Don’t waste your ammo,” he snaps.

“Yeah, yeah, rule whatever, like, fourteen or something. What about that other rule, about not getting yourself cornered? How ‘bout that?”

Keith looks at him and without a word, jerks a thumb over his shoulder.

Lance follows the finger and settles his gaze on the open window. He stares at a nice blue sky with soft, rolling clouds for all but five seconds before looking at Keith.

“You know, we’re in something called an ‘apartment’ right now.”

“I know what an apartment is.”

“This is the fifth floor.”

“We’re low on ammo and we still need to get to the Rocking Roll Fame Hall.”

“You mean, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”

“Whatever. Besides, you’ve jumped out of higher.”

Lance scoffs. “Dude, I’m not, like. Immortal. I still get hurt and shit.”

Keith sends Lance a hard look. “You were genetically engineered from an isolated strand of a metagene. You’ve punched through walls. You can heal.”

“Yeah, but that shit takes time--”

“Then _make_ time.” Keith turns and aims the handgun away from them, firing only once. Lance moves away from the bed as the staggering corpse lands atop the ruined sheets.

Lance grabs Keith by the arm and look him in the eye. “If we jump, you better back me up.”

Keith’s brows furrow deeply. He almost looks insulted. “When have I not?”

Lance throws the window open wider. “First time for anything?”

“No,” Keith says, yellow bleeding into his dark eyes, “Not with this.”

Lance grins. “Don’t make it gay.”

Keith shoves him out the window.

He laughs all the way down.

 

* * *

 

 

### 

 

There’s a blue-eyed blonde with high pigtails, wide hips, and a tiny waist moaning for him. She sends him a half-lidded gaze filled with desire. She’s got legs for days under a blue uniform skirt. She has perfect teeth; this, he’s only guessing based on the top row of straight teeth he can see. He didn’t get to see how straight the bottom row was, ‘cause he knocked it clean off her face in front of the Elvis Presley display.

It hardly fazed him when it happened; she looked like she’d been decaying for about a month. He’s surprised she still has something in her sockets, actually. Plus, he always knew he had jaw-dropping good looks.

To be real honest, he probably isn’t all that much to look at right now. There are splatters of rotting brain matter on the front of his grey and brown shirt, which was white when he first took it at a Walgreens. His pants are ripped (again) at the left side seam when he snagged it on a protruding nail by the Beatles exhibit in the basement, and his shoes are a pair of beat up Adidas that provide absolutely no arch support (that tag _lied_ ). Also, he’s pretty sure the average homeless man smells a hell of a lot better than he does now. He probably smells like the corpse of a wet dog. A _rotting_ corpse, given all the fluids and gunk and shit caked to him right now.

And sweat. He probably also stinks of sweat.

…Is it even possible to pick out nasty body odor from layers and layers of rotting pus and mashed brains? He should ask Keith. He would know.

“Guuahhhh…”

Shit. That sounds _very_ close. And also _not_ like a girl.

Lance turns around.

Oh, look — she’s got a buddy. And they’re wearing matching uniforms!

“Damn,” he mutters, climbing the last step of the staircase he was on, “I can’t even pick up dead chicks without another dude getting in my way.”

The two close behind were the faster of the giant horde from downstairs. The Elvis exhibit had been a nesting ground of the undead, which Lance stupidly walked into without a shred of caution or rational thought because—

_Hey, this is it! This is The Wall! Oh my god, I’m here! I’m actually here! The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s greatest exhibit, right here in front of me!_

The Wall, a thirty-eight by twenty-two foot exhibit for Pink Floyd, was a literal wall made of polished white brick with three inflatables (now deflated) perched on top: an old fart of a teacher, who sits on the far right end of the wall and has legs that stretched for probably 10 feet, the Creature Teacher, who looks like the love child of Squidward and the Predator, and was more looming over the wall (well, now he’s just sort of _drooping_ over the wall), and… some kid-like rag doll sitting in between.

Lance feels tears in his eyes. He’s wanted to see this ever since he was a kid, and he forgot he even had the dream to see it until he found out they were headed towards Cleveland to follow the next beacon. He can’t believe he’s actually here. And that it’s still in one piece. Even sixteen years later, in the middle of a world swarming with zombies, The Wall is in great standing and was still very white — except for a dark brown stain at the base right underneath the teacher, where there lay heaped in a pile the skeletal remains of some poor… Man? Woman? Child? He couldn’t tell. Probably not a child, since the bones were too large—

Oh, _shit,_ he’s supposed to be running.

He lunges forward just as Zombie Chick scratches at his back.

“Ay!” he cries, now sprinting at full speed toward the wall. “I’m not into pain, sorry!”

Zombie Chick growls her disappointment. Her zombie boyfriend, whose stomach was inflated so much with gas that it looked like it would burst any minute, bellows deep and gurgly, a bubble of red liquid bursting from his torn lips. _Ew,_ thinks Lance as he swivels his head back around to The Wall, _that’s gross._

He can’t scale The Wall because the bricks are polished and marbly to the touch. But he _can_ use the deflated figure of the Creature Teacher to pull himself up. Once he’s at the right distance, Lance bends slightly at his knees and springs his whole body forward. He catches the deflated nylon arm of the Creature Teacher. The entire thing starts to sag down. Lance eyes the tension wires keeping the entire thing somehow still up and prays, as he climbs up, that they do not break.

They do, of course, break. But he’s able to latch both arms over the top of The Wall and secure himself against the front of it when it does. He’s panting heavily and coughing from the thick particles of sixteen-year-old dust he’s breathing in as he catches his breath. But he’s here. He’s on The Wall. He made it.

He squeezes his eyes shut and blows hard over the top of the wall to clear the dust off the top. He moves his head side to side to clear most of it away, and waits a few second, holding his breath, before he opens his eyes to see how he’s fared. He takes a slow breath of air first. When he doesn’t immediately cough and choke, he gulps in a huge lungful of air and starts pulling. He drags his chest over the top of the wall, the hard edge of the brick scraping painfully over his nipples. He manages to get his chest to lie on top of it, though, and he pants hard and cries a little on the inside at the knowledge that, by this time, Keith would have already been sitting on top of The Wall.

 _“You need to do more pull ups,”_ he’d say to him. Lance groans. “Shut up,” he tells the Keith in his head, “I hate you.”

He doesn’t hate him. They both know that.

“Haaaauggg,” Zombie Chick says. “Guuahhhh,” Zombie Chick’s boyfriend adds.

“Uuuaaagghh… Gaaaauuuhhhuuuaaaahhhhhh…” says Lance, pulling out the gun from the back of his jeans and setting it carefully on top of The Wall so it wouldn’t fall out as he climbs the rest of the way up. He wonders what makes wild ones sound the way they do. Did the moaning change depending on language? Accents? Someone should do a study on that one day.

But for now, he should finish climbing The Wall.

The edge of the brick knocks painfully against each rib as he continues to drag himself over it. He’s finally able to hang his head over to the other side. He breathes in greedy gulps of dust-free air, admiring the autographed scribbles on the other side of The Wall by the members of Pink Floyd, and resumes bringing himself all the way up. He’s careful not to slip on the bullets of sweat he’s dripping all over the top. Carefully, he maneuvers his torso along, closer to the half-inflated rag-doll figure that looks like a young, impressionable kid. He clutches the sides of the wall as he continues turning and pulling himself up. When part of his left hip manages to make it to the top, Lance flexes his abdomen tight and, with a concentrated groan, brings his left leg up, followed soon by his right.

He’s panting and choking and coughing on dust as he lies on top of The Wall. “Yes,” he hisses valiantly between chokes, slamming a fist against the top and throwing even more dust in the air. “Fucking _hell,”_ he coughs, waving away the dust. His hand thumps against the back of the inflated rag doll. It’s then that it finally sinks in that he not only got to see The Wall, but he actually got to climb it. A grin of elation stretches immediately across his face. _“Fuck_ yeah!” he cheers, slapping the half-inflated thing off the wall. He pushes himself up to sit and pumps both fists in the air. “WHOOOO!” he crows victoriously, his voice echoing in the empty museum.

He immediately regrets what he did, because the museum responds by filling the stagnant silence with enthusiastic zombie groans. The horde of zombies that he ditched on the second floor probably remembered he existed and were on their way up again. Shit. Keith would knock him the fuck off The Wall for that one.

Nah, he wouldn’t. He’d just slap the back of his head and call him an idiot.

“Guaaaah…” “Haaauuggg…”

Oh, right. Zombie Chick and her boyfriend are here, too.

Shit.

Lance picks up his gun. “Worse Case Scenario,” he says aloud, perfectly imitating the way Keith always says it, “You’re being chased in a Rock and Roll museum by two zombies. There's a horde of fifteen not too far away. You stopped to admire the Pink Floyd exhibit — which you stupidly climbed up — and are now fucked because the exhibit’s four floors up and a beautiful dead-end. You have a handgun, a single bullet, and…” Lance digs in his pockets and stares at what’s come up in his hand. “Three peanut M&Ms.” He pops the blue one in his mouth and eats it. _“_ Two peanut M&Ms,” he corrects, moving the remaining red M&Ms around in his palm as he takes a quick survey of his area. Lance pops the rest of the candy in his mouth and turns the safety off on his gun. “Aaand, you just ate all your peanut M&Ms. What do you do?”

Lance holds the gun between his knees. He waits patiently for Zombie Chick and her boyfriend to approach The Wall. When they get close enough, Lance presses his calves hard against the front side of the exhibit and tightens his core. He aims for Zombie Chick’s head, waiting for her boyfriend to stumble along behind her. _Theeere we go,_ he thinks, _two in a row._

“What would _I_ do?” Lance answers his own question with a grin, watching Zombie Chick’s head align perfectly with her boyfriend’s. “Do a Deadpool.” He pulls the trigger.

At the last second, Zombie Chick takes a mis-step and falls. His last bullet only strikes her boyfriend. The bullet goes between his eyes.

“Aw, come on!” he cries in dismay. “Damn, girl, why y’gotta be like that?” He watches Zombie Chick wobble to her feet. _Foot,_ rather. Her left foot had snapped off at the ankle. Lances sees white, jagged bone protruding from her leg. Hilariously enough, it’s being used as a makeshift peg. Lance can’t help but laugh, until he notices that she’s holding her broken foot in her right hand. The foot in her hand is wearing a shoe with a three-inch heel.

“See, this is happening to you because you decided to wear heels today,” Lance says, taking advantage of Zombie Chick’s slowed gait to survey his surroundings. There’s not much to work with up on top of The Wall, but he’s been told time and time again that everything he ever needs is always right in front of him, and Lance hasn’t ever been able to disprove one of Keith’s inane mantras.

Thankfully, Zombie Chick only takes three steps before her other foot breaks off, too. It just so happens that it’s the exact same moment that he’s staring at the heavy vinyl-covered nylon fabric of the Creature Teacher with an idea churning in his head.

“How old are you, anyway? That skirt’s totally from a Catholic school. Trust me, I’d know,” Lance tells her, sidling on his ass across the top of The Wall to get to the Creature Teacher. “Are you, like, fifteen? I think you could pass for fifteen.” He starts pulling up at the Creature Teacher’s legs, trying to pull up its entire lower half. He’s realizing the whole thing is way too heavy for him to throw on top of Zombie Chick, so he starts scooting on over to the old fart on the other side. “So, were you here when shit started going down? Or were you ditching school with your boyfriend—”

Zombie Chick makes a shrieking moan and slams one of her heels into The Wall. It digs visciously into the material, puncturing it.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Lance freaks, now pulling desperately on the nylon fabric the old fart is made of. He steals a glance at Zombie Chick and his heart nearly stops, because she was using her heels to pick-axe her way up The Wall. “Goddamn, lady! What the hell are those made out of?!”

To Lance’s luck, one of Zombie Chick’s arm drops to the ground with a heavy plop. She’s left hanging by the heel of her right shoe. Zombie Chick voices her disgruntlement with another shrieking moan.

“Sorry babe,” Lance grunts as he successfully pulls up the rest of the inflatable old man. He holds the heavy fabric to hover it over Zombie Chick’s head. “I guess you were just a pair of star-crossed lovers.” He drops the nylon fabric. It hits Zombie Chick and takes her down. She lands on the ground with a crack and a wet plop. A nauseating smell hits him like a brick in the face, and Lance gags. “What the—” He takes a closer look, and makes out, in the lumpy shapes below the nylon fabric, that Zombie Chick had fallen on top of her zombie boyfriend. She must’ve burst his stomach.

“What a way to go, damn.”

Just then, two shots ring out overhead. Someone gives a terrifying roar. Lance whips his head around just in time to see a zombie dropping right out of the sky and hitting the top of The Wall. It falls so hard that it splatters pink and grey and red all over the top of The Wall. Lance manages to turn his face away just in time to avoid having his face showered by a splash of festering lung tissue and coagulating blood. The lukewarm splatter hits his back instead, and the stench from this combined with the stink of the popped stomach down below is almost enough to make him throw up. Almost. He’s developed a strong gag reflex over the past three months — **he’s had to,** if he wants to keep up with Keith.

Strong gag reflex or not, he doesn’t want to be inhaling some guy’s decomposed organs. Lance holds his arm up to his face, tucking his nose into the crook of his arm. An oddly familiar stench is added to the mix. It’s a non-zombie-related smell, which piques his interest. Curious, he pulls his nose away and sniffs the air, gagging on the fumes of rotting zombie flesh.

 _Oh,_ he realizes with a laugh, jamming his nose into the bend of his arm once more, _that’s him._

He turns back around, and he’s greeted by the sight of the upper half of what used to be a man on top of The Wall. It’s not even entirely on top; it had fallen so hard, apparently, that the edge of the brick was lodged between its ribs. Its lower half is gone, though. Probably on the floor. A piece of his spine sticks out, along with a thick line of the guy’s large intestine and a chunk of his liver. Lance has the wonderful opportunity to watch that chunk slide out and fall wetly to the ground, squishing atop a curled mound of the man’s small intestine. Judging by the color and shape of this guy’s entrails, Lance guess that the man hadn’t been a zombie for too long. That realization kind of puts a damper on his mood; he wonders what the man was like before the poisoning ran its course.

The zombie turns its head to the side. Lance sees its smashed jaw, flowing red with blood, One of the man’s eye sockets are empty, and a trail of clear fluid is drying on its mangled face. The other socket is still filled; Lance sees a bloodshot sclera and a green iris when it turns his way.

Lance gives the zombie a nod. “Yo, man, what up. How you feelin’?”

The zombie groans.

“Me too, buddy.” Lance kicks it off The Wall. As he does, he hears a gunshot overhead. He looks up through the museum’s hollow rotunda and sees Keith with his back to the railing outlining the fifth floor’s gallery. There are also three zombies hissing and groaning around him.

Keith shoots once, and then a second time. Two of the zombies drop dead, silenced. Then, Lance watches as Keith roars and straight up just punches the shit out of the third one. When it goes down, Keith’s fists are following it to make sure the job gets done.

Lance snorts indignantly. “Oh, _I_ can’t do that, but _he_ can.”

“Lance!” Keith is at the banister again, and Lance isn’t surprised to see that the entirety of Keith’s chest and neck is covered with blood. He’s also not surprised to see large, splotchy patches of purple covering his arms and neck. “Get ready to jump!” he shouts, drawing out another handgun and turning around. Keith shoots at something Lance can’t see. He hears two successive shots, and then a muttered curse that’s followed by heavy groaning that gets louder and louder.

It could also be the horde from the second floor. Who probably are no longer on the second floor at this point, but rather on the fourth floor. _His_ floor. The floor with The Wall.

Lance looks to the side. _Yes,_ confirms the sight awaiting him on top of the stairs, _it’s the horde from the second floor._

He looks back to Keith, who’s still on the fifth floor and facing off what seems to be an equally large group of zombies. Lance notices Keith’s not shooting any of them, and he can’t tell why. It brings the beginnings of fear to gnaw at the back of his mind. He can’t get it to stop. “You’re not out of bullets, are you?”

“I told you to jump, not analyze the situation!”

Lance grits his teeth. Instead of arguing, Lance looks around. To his left, there are three metal benches bolted to the floor of the raised platform. To his front and back, there’s only the railing; beyond even that is a straight four-floor drop down to the lobby’s tiled floor. He doesn’t even bother to check his right; that’s nothing but zombies, and he doesn’t want to freak himself out any further than he already has.

It’s with anxiety bubbling furiously in his stomach that he realizes how there is nowhere he can jump to that guarantees his safety. That’s not what he says to Keith, though.

“Which way and how far?”

“To your front! Toward the car!”

“What car—” Lance spots a tension wire running vertically down in the air just beyond the railing. Then, he spots three others, and then five others. Inching forward to the very edge of The Wall, Lance leans over and follows one of the wires down with his eyes. There are three antique cars suspended in midair. All of them look gaudy and lightweight. He recognizes them as the ones U2 used for the Zoo TV tour, hollowed out as hanging spotlights while performing on stage. He has no idea how a bunch of repurposed cars from the 70s was supposed to help them out at this point.

He also notices that there is no way he can reach any of them, even if he were to throw himself off from the railing. Fear starts to chew up the words in his thought bank. Lance swallows three times before he can finally get something out. “Yeah, uh. That’s not gonna work.”

“Lance.” Keith’s voice is loud, but he doesn’t sound upset. Lance looks up. Keith has actually turned around to look at him straight on. “Trust me, okay?”

Lance tries to suck in a breath, but it makes him choke and he laughs to cover it up. “This is crazy,” he says, rubbing his face with his hands and forcing another laugh. _“We’re_ crazy. We’re fucking crazy.”

Keith doesn’t say anything back, but Lance knows he trusts Lance to jump. They both know he’ll jump.

Lance finally drops his hands from his face. He claps his hands on his knees, and stands up on The Wall. “Alright,” he shouts to no one in particular, slowly backing up all the way to the Creature Teacher. He stares carefully down the length of The Wall, and then at the tension wires holding up the car. He picks the one closest to him and focuses hard. He tries to imagine himself launching off The Wall, stretching his whole body outward, and wrapping his hands around that wire. He feels his nails biting into his palms; his fists are shaking at his sides, and his heart is a maddening drumbeat in his ears.

He starts to run.

He times the jump so that his right foot is the one that launches him into the air With a wordless shout, Lance leaps off and points his arms forward, as if he were only diving. His eyes never leave the tension wire, and he feels his body shoot through the empty space, sailing over the railing and beyond. He sees the hanging Trabant cars get closer and closer, sees the gaudy colors of paint, splashed over each one, sees the one closest to him — U2’s “fertility car,” the one plastered all over with personal ads and newsprint — and reaches out. Up close, he gets a glimpse of something on the side of the car; a woman, giving birth, while pulling on a red string tied to a man’s testicle. _Wow,_ he thinks, fingers scraping through the string as if to cut it, _what a way to go._

He starts to fall.

Panic has a firm grip on his heart. Ice shoots down his spine; he feels it ripping out of his pores as cold beads of sweat. He can no longer hear his heartbeat, but he feels the maddening thrash of a caged bird inside his chest. His eyes, trained hard on the car suspended in the air, follow as it floats gently away.

But he’s not afraid.

Three gunshots ring hollowly in his ears.

He’s not afraid.

A furious roar echoes in the museum, one that gets closer and louder as his heart becomes a fierce drumbeat in his ears once more. A blur of colors (red, black, purple) whips past him and gives the car a sunroof. The car begins to pass him.

He’s not afraid.

As it falls, Lance sees a face inside, one with glowing pinpricks of yellow in a pair of ebony black eyes. A hand shoots out, wrapping tight around his wrist, and pulls him forward. He lands on top of the car, his body draping over the rear window and hands hanging tight to the jagged edge of the hole torn through the roof of the car.  He feels them falling, shooting forward through the air, firing straight at the curtain wall of glass that makes up both the roof and walls of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

…He’s a _little_ bit afraid, now.

Keith doesn’t seem to see the gravity of their situation at all. He hoists himself out of the car through the hole, moving as if the car were grounded and not ten feet in the air. “Brace yourself,” he instructs.

Lance sees the way Keith is crouching on the hood of the Trabant, dark, splotchy patches of purple running up and down his arms and creeping, slowly, into his fingernails. They turn longer, sharper, and dig into the Trabant’s steel unibody as they descend a diagonal path towards the glass window. Lance watches Keith dig his nails further into the hood of the car; he curls inward and leans forward, all of his weight shifting onto a single foot.

Lance freaks. “What are you doing?!” Instead of answering, Keith turns dark and purple, his body morphing to nearly twice the size of what he was. Keith turns around, jaundiced eyes stern. “I said brace yourself!” he shouts before shoving Lance through the hole in the car. His body slides down the makeshift ramp of the roof, made when Keith did a Deadpool of his own to create a sunroof with his feet, and he falls in head-first and screaming.

Lance falls in head-first and screaming. His nose rams against the leather interior of the car’s back seat, flaring white-hot pain across his face. He loses the ability to breathe in one of his nostrils. He feels something wet and warm flowing down to his chin. He doesn’t care; he twists around to try and stick his head back out, but Keith reaches in and plugs the roof by yanking on the metal. “Hey!” Lance pounds on it, heart leaping to his throat. He forgoes thumping at the roof of the car to crawl toward the windshield just in time to see Keith, fully transformed, launching himself off the car and towards the glass windows with his right fist reeled all the way back.

With a beastly roar, Keith punches the shit out of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s western glass wall. It cracks, long diagonal lines running jaggedly over the glass. Then, it shatters completely when the car rams into it.

Everything falls through — the car, him, Keith, shards of glass, steel beams. Everything falls through and crashes into the water.

 

* * *

  

“No, I told you to cover your head with your—  You’re doing it wrong.”

I practically bare my teeth at him. “What do you _mean?”_

His hand comes to grab the back of my head, shoving it forward. My right arm, curled around my face, gets pulled even further. My nose is trapped in the crook of my elbow. I can’t breathe. I try to pull my arm back, but his hand keeps it there.

“Don’t move.” He twists my other arm up and over my head. “And don’t fist your hands. Keep them open.”

The annoying _‘like I told you to’_ doesn’t get said. Good, I think, because I’m sick and tired of hearing it. I want. To _breathe._ But his hand’s still pressing hard against my head, and the only reason why I’m not kicking and screaming and putting up a fuss like I’d normally do is the fact that the faster I do what he says the faster this whole thing can be over. So, I open my hands and keep my arms right where they are.

“Good.” He taps my right arm. “Turn your wrist.”

I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean.

Keith makes this angry, hissing sound through his teeth. Then he’s reaching over and pressing my hand to touch the back of my neck. “Like _this,”_ he says, like I was somehow supposed to know he meant that. “And your other arm,” he pulls my left arm up over my head, “goes like this,” and secures the hold by pressing my left palm against the side of my head just above my ear.

He lets me go. I stand with my arms covering my head for a good thirty seconds before he talks again.

“Keep your legs together. Tight. Good. And remember, feet first.” He taps me roughly on the shoulder. “Drop your arms.”

With a sigh, I let my arms fall away from my sweaty face. But we’re not done.

“Do it over,” he says, crossing his arms at me.

“Uh,” I gesture wildly to the rotting corpses beside us. “Shouldn’t we be, I don’t know, getting the fuck out of here? We’ve been here for hours!”

“Thirty minutes,” he corrects, because of course he would know. His eyes get stern. “Do it again. Show me you can do it on your own.”

I grumble and bitch and moan while I show him how to cover my head the right way — _his_ way.

Keith’s hand taps heavily on my shoulder. “Ch’. Open hands,” he snaps while I tell him to fuck off in my head. “And keep your legs — _There_ we go. Good. Now drop your arms—”

I let my arms drop.

“—And do it again.”

I cover my head.

“Can you breathe?”

“No.” I can.

“Do it again.”

“Are you fucking kidding me—”

“This is a skill you need to know.”

“For _what?!_ We’re in the middle of a desert!”

He stares at me long and hard. Some kind of fire lights his eyes, but I don’t give a shit.

“You’re so fucking paranoid,” I hiss at him, kicking sand his way. “When are we ever gonna jump down a waterfall?”

“Rule twenty-three—”

I slap my forehead and drag my hand down my face. “ _Oh_ my _God_.”

“—Don’t be an idiot.” Keith puts a hand on his hip and looks at me like he doesn’t know what to do with me. “We’re not staying in the desert forever. The next beacon’s in Michigan. The midwestern region is a boreal forest biome—”

“A _what.”_

“—well known for its falls. You need to be prepared.”

“To jump down the fucking falls? In Michigan?! For what?!”

“In case you’re cornered.”

I laugh at him. It’s a dry, bitter sound. “You,” I jab a finger in his face, “You are _so_ paranoid.”

Keith just frowns, like he’s disappointed in me or something. “You need to be prepared,” he repeats.

“Yeah? Okay, then. _You_ can go jump in the falls while _I,”_ I kick at the rotting corpses, “knock these fuckers down after you.” I keep kicking the bodies, Keith’s frown setting deep lines in his face. He’s looking at me like I’m some twelve year old kid who just asked why they shouldn’t stick a metal fork in an outlet. I hate when he gets like that. It means there’s a lecture coming. A long one, one that starts with “Worst Case Scenario” and ends with me getting a speech all about how _“this isn’t a game.”_

My foot breaks into someone’s chest cavity and gets stuck. I freeze. A cold shiver of disgust runs down my spine. “Oh, fuck,” I gasp, tugging my foot out and backing the fuck up. A putrid, festering stench hits my face before I can throw an arm over it. “Are you fucking— Shit, why? _Why_ did I do that?”

I spend the next five or so minutes trying to get rid of the gunk stuck on my shoe, shoving it this way and that through the sand. Keith doesn’t help. He just stands there, watching. It would’ve pissed me off, but there’s something on his face I’ve never seen before. It’s the only reason why I don’t tell him to shut the fuck up before I do it myself. Instead, I just grumble and bitch and moan like I always do. Except this time, there’s a smile on Keith’s face.

“Alright,” he says, coming over and stopping me with a hand. “That’s enough.”

I give him a look. The smile’s off his face, but there are no lines in his brow like there usually is when he’s about to tell me to do something.

“One more time,” he says. “Last time.”

I only grumble once before I cover my head. I make sure my hands are open. I keep my legs tight. I wait for Keith to say something.

It’s quiet for a long time. Then, a hand drops heavily over the wrist that’s on top of my head. His hand is warm. When he speaks, it’s low and quiet.

“Good job.”

I let my hands drop, wiping the sweat off my face as they fall. When I can see again, Keith’s back is already ten steps ahead of me. My heart flatlines for five seconds and my brain flips the fuck out before it kills my Panic Mode and gets my feet into gear. I’m walking next to Keith in three heartbeats. “So,” I drawl conversationally, “Michigan, huh.”

Keith nods.

“You ever been there?”

Keith nods again. “Once. A few years ago, in the winter.”

“Oh, cool. What’s it like in the winter?”

“Cold. Lots of snow.”

“You don’t say.” Either Keith wasn’t in a talking mood, or he was Thinking. And Thinking meant The Game.

I try to veer him off course. “Dude, I can’t wait to get out of this fucking desert,” I gush, knocking an elbow into his arm and grinning. “Right? I mean, all this dry air is killing my skin. Don’t you hate waking up and having to deal with your own ashy self?”

Keith gets a thoughtful look in his eyes. “Worst Case Scenario—”

“Keith, no—”

“You’re trying to cross a frozen river. The ice breaks and you fall into the water. What do you do?”

A song pops into my head the second he mentions water. Naturally, I say it out loud. “Just keep swimming?”

Keith thwacks the back of my head. Not hard enough to sting, but enough to make me feel his disappointment. “Quit being an idiot and take this seriously, Lance. This isn’t a game.”

I hastily cut in, trying to get him to stop. “I know, I know—”

Keith isn't convinced. “Obviously you don’t.” He furrows his brows together so much, it almost looks like a unibrow. I swallow down the laughter with a forced cough. He doesn’t buy it. Instead, his eyes narrow and he puts on his Stern Face.

“Look,” he starts, voice entering lecture mode, “I don’t know what it’s gonna take, but you need to start taking things seriously…”

It gets harder and harder to tune him out as the days go by. Not because the sick, grim reality of our situation has gradually begun to sink in, (because it’s already sunken in deep—trust me), but because I find that I actually enjoy hearing him talk. Keith’s got a nice voice that’s soft and gentle but still deep enough to rumble in your ears. It makes you think about things you’d never really bother to think about, like the soft rolling sounds of a car engine waiting at a red light, or the quiet purr of a cat on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Normal things, back when the world was still some place that meant something—Life. Joy. Laughter. Home.

“—Got it?”

I’m thinking about home when I hear an inflection of inquiry in Keith’s voice. I jerk my head up. “Got what, now?” I look at Keith, half expecting to see flecks of yellow in his eyes. But his eyes are as dark as they ever are, and his brows furrowed in an unfamiliar way.

Something wet slides down my face. I bring a hand up to my face. My eyes are wet. I’m crying.

“Sorry,” I say, mortified as I wipe my face with my hands. “Sorry.”

I feel a hand on my shoulder, a careful touch that’s feather-light. “Rule twenty-four,” he says, “Don’t forget to cry.”

I laugh through my tears. “What? Now you’re just making shit up.”

The hand moves to my hair. “C’mon,” Keith grumbles, his hand making a mess of my hair. “Let’s get out of here.” He starts walking on ahead of me.

I pat my hair down the best I can with my fingers, then catch up to him and match his pace in no time. The instant I’m by his side, Keith is all business again.

“Worst Case Scenario—”

“Dude, no.”

“You try to cross a frozen river and you fall in.”

“We were _bonding._ ”

“You’re alone, and it’s the middle of the night. What do you do?”

I grit my teeth. “Get out the river and find you. Then tell you to go fuck yourself and throw you in a river, ‘cause who the fuck leaves their partner behind in the fucking cold?”

Keith throws back his head and laughs.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Before he hits the water, Lance covers his head and squeezes his eyes shut. He’s taking the biggest gulp of air and tucking in his nose into his arm just as his body crashes through the lake.

The water is freezing.

 _Swim,_ Lance remembers Keith telling him; it’s the only thing he can hear, _Swim as soon as you hit the water._

Lance kicks his legs and uses his arms. Then, he remembers to open his eyes. When he does, he realizes he’s swimming down. Something large whooshes right beside him, dark and shadowed — steel frames from the museum’s glass atrium. Half the breath in his lungs ejects in a stream of bubbles. Lance feels his lungs squeeze painfully and claps his hands over his nose and mouth. Panic keeps him frozen. Then, he hears Keith again — _Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic._

Rule seven is a mantra in his head. Lance lets it run on repeat as he twists himself in the water to face up. Light shimmers above, and in that light he sees him — he sees Keith. His arms stretch for him. His legs kick in the water.

It doesn’t take long before Lance breaks the surface. He comes up for air with a wheezing gasp. His face is just barely above the water when his lungs give up and force him to inhale sharply. Lance shoves air down his throat one greedy gulp after another. His arms and legs tread circles in the water. In seconds, Lance’s whole face is out of the water.

The first thing Lance hears Keith say is something critical. “You didn’t go in feet first.”

Lance starts to laugh. He slaps at the water, kicking his feet together, and throws his head back. “You fucker,” he grins, slapping water in Keith’s face, “You’re looking fine, too.”

Keith’s face is covered with dark splotches of purple. Black starts to bleed into his eyes again, the yellow reducing to nothing but startling pinpricks of color in dark irises. There is a frown on his face. “I’m serious,” he says, “You need to be—”

“Blah, blah, blah, be prepared, yeah, I gotcha.” Lance jerks his head towards the ruined museum. “Look — We got in, we got out, we’re not missing any limbs… I think we’re good.”

Keith’s eyes get stern.

Lance isn’t having it. “Look, buddy. You jumped off the railing on the fifth floor, landed in a car as old as balls hanging from the ceiling by wires, and sent us flying through the glass wall of a historical landmark. I think me not going in the water feet first should be the least of our worries here. Rule three, remember?”

Keith stares at him quietly for a moment before arching a brow. “Which one was that again?”

Lance stares mutely at Keith. Water laps gently around them. “Oh my god,” he whispers numbly, “You really _were_ making them up.”

Keith sends water flying his way. “Shut up and swim.”

Water floods his airways. “Okay,” Lance manages between coughs, arms moving quickly to start a freestyle stroke.

They’re halfway to shore when Keith suddenly curses and changes direction. Lance stops swimming to watch Keith heading back towards the museum. “Where the hell are you going?”

Keith doesn’t stop swimming. “I left the tracker on the second floor.”

“You _what?!”_

“Stop shouting,” Keith hisses angrily.

Lance ignores him. “Did you remember to take the shard?”

Keith stops swimming. He turns around and pins Lance with a look. “I thought we said you were going for the shard.”

Lance stills in the water.

For a while, they do nothing but tread water and stare at each other in silence.

Then, they’re shouting angrily at each other as they head back to the museum in sopping, wet clothes. The entire time they’re there, they don’t stop grumbling and bitching and moaning about how fucking stupid this whole thing is.

**Author's Note:**

> "s-tover" on tumblr.


End file.
